KGB influence soars under Putin

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LE

Four out of five political leaders and state administrators in Russia either have been or still are members of the security services, a study suggests.

The unprecedented research implies a huge expansion of KGB-FSB influence in politics and business in recent years.
...
the siloviki - ex-KGB operatives or those working for its successor organisation, the FSB - have done well in President Putin's Russia.

LE

What's your point, Sergey? That he is one of the uncorruptables and didn't line his pockets or that he wasn't competent enough to get picked up for some of these latter day posts and is bitter and twisted about it?

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

LE

I think that what Sergey is trying to say is that the financial 'game' the russian secret services are playing or are insinuated to have at their disposal may well be overestimated and also many KGB officers took their duty seriously without gaining great wealth from doing their duty!

LE

Stop being nice to Sergey. I like crossing swords with him on matters like this. You always get a better answer from him if you do a bit of winding up first, particularly if he is playing down the internal problems of Mother Russia under Putin.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Old-Salt

LE

What's your point, Sergey? That he is one of the uncorruptables and didn't line his pockets or that he wasn't competent enough to get picked up for some of these latter day posts and is bitter and twisted about it?

ADC

Yes it is curious how bashing Russia recently has replaced the anti muslim tirade in the established media, all of the semi retired Soviet Union experts and newspaper headlines are being dusted off, making lazy journalism easier and in the eyes of the establishment the growth of the BNP less likely.

Also PR companies employed by the likes of Shell are also stirring things up, as Russia chooses to review the outrageously unfair Oil ,Gas and Mineral contracts drawn up in the dark days of the mid 90âs.

'There is much to learn from the British: their reticence about disclosing details, their clear expertise in human intelligence, their non-hysterical reaction to very real threats. Many Americans may have an inferiority complex about things British -- the refinement, the style and, of course, those accents' -

War Hero

Anyone who doubts the influence of ex-KGB people in today's Russia needs to get out a bit more. They run it, lock, stock and both smoking barrels.

And if the Russian government doesn't like the agreements signed in the 1990s, it's only got itself to blame - nobody put a gun to their heads and said "sign or else." I'd quite like to renegotiate my mortgage too, but I don't suppose Nat West will say sure, how about 2% interest? The 1990s were tremendously unstable and risky, and those firms who invested did so in a very uncertain climate, and the rewards they reap reflect that. Remember what a barrel of oil cost in 1997?

Vlad and his mates might think they are big and clever kicking all these guys in the b*llocks now, but when foreign investment has dried up in five years and all the domestic, state-run outfits are running these projects into the ground with their usual corrupt, inept style, I think they might live to regret it. But hey, since when has anyone in power in Russia ever thought beyond next week and how much they can steal?

LE

Stoatman - the difference here is that the Soviet union collapsed and wasn't destroyed during war leaving their 'services' to continue./

By the way, in the British sector the allies, british, helped ex SD policemen and Gestapo men back into positions of power within the 'new' police. They had to - they were the only german trained police with experience!!!

LE

Stoatman - the difference here is that the Soviet union collapsed and wasn't destroyed during war leaving their 'services' to continue./

By the way, in the British sector the allies, british, helped ex SD policemen and Gestapo men back into positions of power within the 'new' police. They had to - they were the only german trained police with experience!!!

Also do a bit of research on the Head of CID in Celle until 1978, Kriminalhauptkommisar Karl-Heinz MÃ¼ller, who was sentenced to death in absentia by a French court shortly after WWII for atrocities committed as a member of the SS.

LE

SVR is something like MI6 while FSB is rather an analog of MI5. Also there is a GRU - military intelligence service (my uncle, now he is seriously ill is a former colonel of GRU). My father (a former colonel of KGB) serviced in military counter-intelligence.

War Hero

The Russians are riding high on energy prices and will continue throwing their weight around for the foreseeable future.

Anyone who can supply oil or gas basically can grip Europe by the b*lls as they are now awash with cash and we depend on them both for energy supply and to buy our exports - look how the UK has caved in to Saudi on the Al-Yamamah contracts. Likewise, Algeria has been pummelling the Spanish over the Western Sahara over the last couple of days, using its gas supplies as leverage.

LE

The Russians are riding high on energy prices and will continue throwing their weight around for the foreseeable future.

Anyone who can supply oil or gas basically can grip Europe by the b*lls as they are now awash with cash and we depend on them both for energy supply and to buy our exports - look how the UK has caved in to Saudi on the Al-Yamamah contracts. Likewise, Algeria has been pummelling the Spanish over the Western Sahara over the last couple of days, using its gas supplies as leverage.

Old-Salt

It is pretty obvious that Putin needs new boyars. Communism was just a phase in Russian history as the Tsarist Empire fell apart after its expansionist phase.

As the Duke of Wellington put it - If Russia doesn't expand, it rots. The Communist disaster took 20 years to unravel. The GDR was insolvent in 1972 and kept going by selling cheap Russian oil to the West and burning lignite at home. Brezhnev took the USSR into stagnation and noone could get it out.

Just as Communism survived because a) Russia was big b) it had lots of natural resources....................today it is (b) that is making up for its inadequacy as an industrial power as China gets the electronics and consumer businesses.

The Nomenklatura found out how to privatise themselves into real-estate and resources with a few banks to boot. Looking at Abramovitch, Berezovsky, Khodorovsky, Fridman, Gusinsky it is hard to see them as entrepreneurs - more freebooters and they started exporting too much money through Cyprus and Jersey leaving the Nomenklatura with only the sniff of real money.

No wonder they decided to repatriate it and eradicate those who stood in the way. Yeltsin was bounced out by Gorbachev; Gorbachev was bounced out by his Politburo staging a coup; Yeltsin beat the coup, Gorbachev came back; Yeltsin stranded him with the USSR as Russia went off on its own........................Yeltsin needed a New Class of boyars - his daughter found Berzovsky and friends.

Putin gets leveraged up there with FSB and SVR help and he needs to reward his boyars. Chechnya is important for gas and oil pipelines to Turkeyt from the Caspian - The West prefers them not to go through Russian spheres of influence; Russia insists they do - so Chechnya stays under Russian supervision.

It is so hard to see what game is being played ? The Turks and Iranians are fishing in Central Asia, and i suppose we Westerners are fishing for oil pipelines without Russian control. It is The Great Game..............at least the Victorians understood it as did Churchill, but modern politicians in The West are too obsessed with kindergarten politics to think strategically.

As for GRU - maybe they should put up a statue to Major George Hill of MI6 who helped Trotsky set it up in order to garner Intelligence on German Army positions on the Eastern Front in 1918..........................he later returned to Moscow as Resident in WWII